


Venusberg

by EnricoDandolo



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Tannhäuser - Wagner
Genre: F/M, Richard Wagner references, Romance, Sibling Incest, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 03:27:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21092618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnricoDandolo/pseuds/EnricoDandolo
Summary: It is the day of their departure, and Sara wakes up doubting the wisdom of their choices.





	Venusberg

_Zu Gottes Preis in hoch erhabne Fernen,_

_blickt auf zum Himmel, blickt auf zu seinen Sternen!_

_Anbetung solchen Wundern zollt,_

_da ihr sie nicht begreifen sollt!_

_Doch was sich der Berührung beuget,_

_euch Herz und Sinnen nahe liegt,_

_was sich, aus gleichem Stoff erzeuget,_

_in weicher Formung an euch schmiegt, -_

_dem ziemt Genuss in freud'gem Triebe,_

_und im Genuss nur kenn' ich Liebe!_

* * *

She awoke some time before her alarm, the bright sunlight uncomfortably hot on her face. They hadn’t bothered to draw the curtains and the tinted windows overlooking downtown Armstrong, though filtering out harmful UV radiation, did little to shield them from visible light. She yawned, drew the somewhat clammy blanket up to her ears, rolled over and nestled closer to her partner, nuzzling up to his shoulder. His skin was hot against hers, his smell comfortingly familiar. The sun warmed her bare back through the blanket.

Sara didn’t have long to enjoy the peace and quiet. No sooner had she made herself comfortable than the omni-tool on her nightstand began blasting out Wagner. _Freudig begrüßen wir die edle Halle__ …_ Groaning, she stirred, rolled off her partner’s body and grasped blindly for the tool. “Alright, alright,” she muttered, blinded by the pure white sunlight falling into her eyes, “’m awake …” She managed to stop the alarm a dozen measures in, turning the music down to a more reasonable volume. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she sat up in bed, the blanket pooling around her waist, stretched.

Once she had regained the use of her faculties and knew where, when and who she was, she glanced over at the man lying by her side. She could not stop a smile from creeping over her face. He was still fast asleep, all the efforts of Landgrave Hermann notwithstanding, curled up and clinging to the blanket. Sara leant closer. His mouth was very slightly open, his breathing slow and steady. For a moment, she watched him, following the curve of his shoulder blade, the tendons of his neck, the shadowed line of his jaw. She knew every inch of his body as well as her own, but never did she fail to be entranced, nor did her heart ever fail to leap when she saw him like this.

Having stolen this moment from him, she leaned down to kiss him. “Wakey, wakey,” she murmured into his brow. “You don’t wanna sleep in today.” He merely turned away with a groan and clung more tightly to the blanket. Sara rolled her eyes. “Suit yourself.” She strapped on her omni-tool, then got out of bed.

The sprawling suite at the Ritz-Astoria overlooking Tranquillity Base had cost them most of their remaining life savings, not that either of them had had a great deal left. Sara was pretty sure they’d drank the remainder last night, toasting a new future with a 1969 Gevrey-Chambertin. Might as well go for the novelty factor.

She walked over to the window, her bare feet sinking into the thick carpet like heavy boots in the lunar regolith, and turned up the filters to dim the light. Tranquillity Base stuck out like a sore thumb, a domed-over patch of grey dust amidst the urban sprawl of downtown Armstrong. They’d seen the site before, mingling among tourists, Alliance recruits and bored schoolchildren as they looked down unto the prosaic remains of humanity’s first bumbling steps through the plexiglass floor that shielded flags and footprints. Yesterday, the place had been full of vaguely familiar faces, everywhere they’d looked had been the Initiative’s logo—excited would-be pioneers bathing in historicism. They’d glanced at each other. “Let’s get out of here.” They hadn’t actually gotten to see what they’d come for, but that was fine. 

Humming along to the music from her ‘tool, Sara moved into the bathroom, all gold and marble shipped from Earth and larger than her old flat on Arcturus. She had neglected to clean up after they had made love yesterday and was in dire need of a shower. She took her time, enjoying the hot steam and the rivulets of scalding water lashing her skin before dripping to the marble floor with that peculiar dancelike languor that seemed to define all movement in lunar gravity. Going by the projections, it sounded like it might be the last hot shower she’d have for quite some time. Just another point she hadn’t considered when agreeing to this foolhardy endeavour. The hotel shampoo smelled of citrus and Thessian spices; for a moment she considered pocketing it before remembering there was no point.

She exited the shower, dried her hair and set about the rest of her morning routine, making liberal use of the hotel toiletries and humming along to the music from her omni-tool all the while. When she exited the bathroom, she found her lover still fast asleep. Sara stilled in the doorway, taking a moment to watch him, smile on her lips. Typical. She couldn’t have pretended to be surprised, even on a day like this. At other times, she might have slipped back into bed to hold him, cherishing the rare opportunity to enjoy more than fleeting intimacy.

Instead, she rolled one of her wet towels up in a ball and hurled it at him.

Scott’s curse was muffled by drowsiness, but he bolted upright and tangled with the towel as though it had attempted to strangle him. Finally he freed himself and glared at her as best he could from half-lidded eyes. “Time to get up, sleepyhead,” she told him, smirking. “Shower’s free.”

“Could’ve just told me …” her brother grumbled and dragged himself out of bed. “No need to assault me.”

“You sleep any longer and we’re likely to miss our ride. Come on, little brother.” She caught him by the wrist as he shuffled past her towards the bathroom and leaned in to kiss him. “Good morning. You smell like shit, go shower.”

“Join me?”

“Mmhm. Next time.”

While Scott was in the bathroom, Sara got dressed in her Initiative uniform, still ill-fitting and smelling of plastics. Say what you liked about the Alliance; her navy blues had felt like a second skin. She doubted she’d ever be as comfortable in the white-and-red gear of the Pathfinder team. Just gotta sit it out, she told herself, the way they’d planned. Once things got settled in Andromeda, they’d have all the time in the world.

The clothes she’d worn yesterday (as well as the racy new lingerie she hadn’t), she folded up and left on the bedroom dresser with a note asking for the hotel staff to donate them to charity. She’d already checked in all the personal effects she’d take with her: a few changes of civilian clothes, a replica of the first Prothean potsherd she’d helped dig up, a broach that had belonged to mum, an OSD with recordings and various memories, and of course her violin in a vacuum-sealed case she’d been ensured would keep the wood from warping for at least six centuries. That last item had kinda put a limit on what else she could bring, honestly, but she wasn’t about to give up on her music.

That had been one of her conditions. She’d had a lot of those. Sara remembered that evening on the Citadel, at a Zakera Ward sushi restaurant, quite well. Neither of them had had any idea as to why they’d been ordered to attend (dad never asked) and they’d both expected the worst. Neither of them had expected a sales pitch. _Start a new life in Andromeda. _She had seen the rapture in Scott’s eyes as he listened to their dad and it had scared her.

They’d met up on the Presidium the next day, just her and Scott. When she saw him, she knew he’d been sold, and she hated—well, whom exactly? Him, never. Herself, their dad, the entire fucking universe? But she’d ground her teeth and argued and, in the end, relented. He’d looked as miserable as she’d felt.

By the time Scott left the bathroom, she was lounging on the couch, tapping her foot along to the music. She watched (well, leered) him scrounge up his clothes. “You want to have breakfast?” she tried, half-heartedly. “We could order room service.”

“They said not to eat anything before departure, remember?” Well, there went that idea.

She said nothing else for a while, not until her brother had finished dressing. He actually looked handsome in that cheap-ass plastic uniform, damn him. He regarded her as he zipped up his jacket, worry plain in his face. “You still having doubts about this?”

“I’m rather amazed that you aren’t.”

Scott sighed and shook his head. They’d had this conversation before, too many times. Then, he walked over to her and took her hands. “It’s not too late to back out,” he reminded her, gentle as ever. To him, it would never be too late, not until they actually locked him in his cryo pod.

She smiled at that. “It’s fine. I’ve made my choice.” Truth be told, she’d made it that day on the Presidium. They’d come into this galaxy together, after all. She wasn’t about to let Scott outlive her by six hundred years. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you when this whole Initiative turns out to be a massive Ponzi scheme, though. Half the people on those arks are rich idiots with more money than sense, and Garson’s all too eager to have them carve out her own kingdom.”

“You’re such a cynic.” Scott chuckled. “Look, no one is saying this will go off without a hitch. It’ll be hard work, but in the end, it’ll be worth it, trust me. This is our chance. The moment things settle down over there, we’ll be free to go wherever we like. We’ll have a whole new galaxy to explore. None of this old shit holding us back anymore.”

How often had he painted that picture for her? The details differed—now a cabin in the mountains of Habitat 4, then a ship of their own charting the course beyond Heleus, then a beachfront villa on Habitat 7—but always, always, always they were together. The more excited he got, the less she wanted to object. _We won’t be alone. Dad will be there. Nothing will change. _They would still have to hide, as they had their entire lives.

She couldn’t blame Scott for wanting to try something, anything, to change that.

Anything she might have said stuck in her throat, so she kissed him. “I’ve really enjoyed these past two months,” she told him. “Thank you for that.” They had spent the weeks leading up to the arks’ departure together, longer than they’d ever had to themselves but always paranoid about being found out. As far as dad was concerned, they’d taken each other to some of their favourite places on Earth, one last pilgrimage before they left home forever.

Each had made three choices and agreed to humour the other’s: for Scott, they’d raved in Chennai nightclubs, gotten front-row seats to a Seattle Sorcerers game, and seen the aurora australis from the Transantarctic Mountains. For her, they’d gone hiking in the Hindukush, scouring the Vatican Museums, and she’d gotten her hands on two tickets for _Tristan und Isolde _at the Bayreuth Festival. For that last one, Scott had even refrained from making any snide comments about the music, though she _had _found him asleep when she tried to hold his hand in the darkness of the Festspielhaus. _O sink hernieder, Nacht der Liebe__. _Still, they’d walked down the festival hill hand in hand, her usual caution dead in the dark of night, and clung to one another until hateful break of day.

“You’re scared,” Scott said, quietly.

Scared? Perhaps she was, at that. She wasn’t worried that the cryostasis would fail, or that Garson and her stooges would dump them all overboard the moment they’d gone to sleep. She wasn’t even scared of leaving behind everything she’d ever known for an uncertain future. “I want this to be our future,” she told her brother. “Not something dad chose for us. Not something we just fell into because it was the path of least resistance. That whole _pathfinder _thing, the AI, those fucking implants … every step just makes me feel more like a puppet. This whole Andromeda thing is supposed to be about freedom, a fresh start. How do you see us ever getting our fresh start if we’re dragging all our baggage with us from the Milky Way?”

“I don’t know, frankly. But I know it’ll be better than this. New galaxy, new rules, right?”

“Dad’s going to kill us when he finds out.”

“Fuck dad. Fuck all of them.” The outburst took her aback. She wasn’t used to Scott losing his cool. “This is us. No one else gets a say in this. _No one._” He paused. A fire had lit up in his eyes. When he continued, his voice was gentle once more. “I love you, Sara. You want to stay, I’ll stay with you. But I’m sick and tired of hiding all the time. Whether here or in Andromeda, it’s high time for us to come out and face the music. And we’re gonna do it together.”

It was a well-practised speech, one she had heard before many times, in many different forms. Sometimes, it had moved her to tears, other times she had laughed it off. Now, she could not but wonder. She tried to imagine the two of them standing in front of their father—no, no, not that. Much better not to dwell on that. Think rather of what would come after (assuming they survived). That log cabin on Habitat 4, those white beaches on Habitat 7, but always: Scott, Scott, Scott, and her always by his side, the way it should be. Waking up together (ish) every morning, going to sleep together (ish) every night, all the things they could never have in the Milky Way.

Children? Why the hell not? It wasn’t as though they wouldn’t have genetic engineers in Andromeda. In fact, the Initiative had insisted on administering additional gene therapy to the Pathfinder teams along their AI implants, in addition to that they had received in-utero and in the Alliance. Little Scotts and little Saras, born into a new world their parents had forged for them … She glanced at her sweet, brash fool of a twin, heart melting. Well, maybe that _would _be something to consider, at least when they were a bit older and things in Andromeda had settled down.

“Scott?” she asked, softly, cupping his cheeks in her hands. “Promise me this, okay?”

“Anything,” he responded at once, then added, in pretend hesitation. “This isn’t gonna be like our 14th—”

She had to laugh. “No, you dork. Come on, I’m trying to have a heartfelt moment here, alright?”

Scott smiled up at her, laid a warm, tender hand upon hers. “Alright. Shoot.”

“Promise me we’ll always be together.”

“Always. I promise.”

* * *

It was never supposed to be like this.

She hides her thoughts, her feelings, from the spy inside her brain, the voice that will not shut up. “You promised,” she whispers, voice choked as she holds her twin’s hand. She wants to bed her head on his chest, hear his heartbeat, but there are always people watching. She wants to kiss her prince awake or share in his slumber, wants to feel him once again, but _it _is always watching. She wants to spend eternity by his bedside, but she cannot shirk her duties. Lives depend on her—their future depends on her. “You promised …”

She lets go off his hand, dries her tears, and shoulders her violin. She can do this for him, at least, she tells herself, as if he’d care. This is for her. Something from _Tannhäuser, _perhaps. Yes, that’ll do nicely.

* * *

_Dir, Göttin der Liebe, soll mein Lied ertönen,_  
_gesungen laut sei jetzt dein Preis von mir!_  
_Dein süßer Reiz ist Quelle alles Schönen,_  
_und jedes holde Wunder stammt von dir!_  
_Wer dich mit Glut in seine Arme geschlossen,_  
_was Liebe ist, kennt der, nur der allein!_  
_Armsel'ge, die ihr Liebe nie genossen,_  
_zieht hin! Zieht in den Berg der Venus ein!_


End file.
